May Day 2025

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last week's Dragon Folk Club session was our first one of May, so our optional theme was that very month, and certainly there are lots of songs which mention it.

This week's theme will be VE Day and everything that goes with it. No doubt songs of war and anti-war will emerge.

We were pleased to see Stan who has been an occasional visitor for some time, as well as Stuart and Carrie who are become more frequent which is great. Denny was without Paul who was apparently biting his nails over the snooker on television.

Stand-in MC Simon, while not late, was last to arrive and so was relegated to the graveyard shift on each rotation. It was Stuart and Carrie who kicked things off with Bonny light horseman (* roud 1185).

As usual with a duo Stuart and Carrie (or should that be Carrie and Stuart?) were asked to sing again immediately and they gave us Hills of Shiloh (Shel Silverstein, Jim Friedman).

Denny started the May theme with Rosabella (roud 21134) "One Monday morning in the month of May...".

Singing I'd never find another you (* Gerry Goffin, Carole King), Stan referred to the version by Billy Fury, but here we have the original version by Tony Orlando.

Simon finished off the first rotation with Lady Franklin's lament (roud 487, laws K09). Stuart mentioned that he had been asked by someone to sing this song and wanted to play along. Simon suggested he might play the same tune again later (which he did).

On the second rotation Stuart and Carrie sang Joni Mitchell's Urge for going (*). If you watch the video, please bear with the first minute because it's worth the wait for this less-well-known of her songs.

It was on this second time round also that as promised Simon gave Stuart a chance to try his accompaniment, this time to Les Barker's Lord Franklin. Stuart continued, joined by Carrie to sing Mark Knopfler's Why worry (*).

Carrie was very pleased when Stan introduced one of her favourite songs, Don MacLean's Castles in the air (*).

Stuart and Carrie introduced yet another new song for the Dragon database in You've got to walk that lonesome valley (* roud 7098), represented here by the earliest recording of the song with The Jenkins Family singing it in 1925.

Carrie performed Jake Bugg's Country song (*) alone followed by Stan introducing us to Hier encore (Georges Garvarentz, Charles Aznavour), but in its English version: Yesterday when I was young (*), with words by Herbert Kretzmer.

Stan's final song was Always on my mind (* Wayne Carson, Mark James, Johnny Christopher). He was thinking of Willie Nelson's version, but here we have the original recording by Brenda Lee.

Simon finished off the session with Big rock candy mountain, claimed to have been written by Harry "Haywire Mac" McClintock. This version is a bit harder-hitting than that sung by Burl Ives and a mainstay of BBC Radio's children's programmes.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 5 of whom 5 performed)

In the above report songs new to the Dragon database (though no always new to the club) are marked with an asterisk (*) and songs not to be found in the playlist linked from "a selection" are marked with a hash (#).